Angling

It's the birthday of English Renaissance writer Izaak Walton, (books by this author) born in Stafford, England, in 1593. It was the year that English theaters shut down because of the plague, and Shakespeare's career as actor and owner of an actor's group derailed. Shakespeare wrote two narrative erotic-themed poems that year, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece,and subsequently began to write the tragedies for which he is best known, starting with Romeo and Juliet in 1595.

Izaak Walton's wrote mostly biographies, including one on John Donne, but his best-known work is a guide to the joys of fishing, entitled The Compleat Angler and first published in 1653. It's now been through more than 300 new printings; it's one of the most re-printed books in British history. It's a how-to manual intertwined with personal narrative, meditations on nature, lively anecdotes, folklore, geographical descriptions, songs, ballads, and famous quotations.

From The Compleat Angler:
"Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, 'Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did'; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling."